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Thursday, December 21, 2017

It turns out that Donald Trump and Enrique Peña Nieto have something in common after all. Their authoritarian leanings lead them to support Juan Orlando Hernández against the suggestion of the Organization of American States.

A State Department official says there is no "credible evidence" of fraud despite the OAS statement citing credible evidence and the large array of credible evidence discovered by reporters (like The Economist) and others.

This is a terrible idea and bad policy. In Honduras it will lead to people dying because Hondurans believe there was fraud and are fighting back against it. A new election was the only way to resolve the crisis. There will be more protests and more repression, and the repercussions will go on for years.

Regionally it cements the notion that the U.S. is not a credible leader. You can't credibly criticize elections in Venezuela while praising them in Honduras. You have to criticize both.

1 comments:

I think the most pressing issue, by a long, long, way, are violent right wing oligarchies and autocracies. Who mutually support one another.

One means by which the current invidious situation is perpetuated is through the proffering of hippies for the few people (proportionally speaking) permitted to have comfortable lives to punch.

There are real opportunity costs for punching Maduro (and I think Lula will realize this deeper into campaigning) and his sort, no matter how justified it is to heave opprobrium on his conduct.

Any fire that liberals divert to such business has to take this into account so as to minimize the support they're giving to regimes, including Trump, who are considerably more a menace to Honduran and Venezuelan lives in the aggregate than Maduro. The regime Maduro fronts for can only hurt Venezuelans in specific ways, the type of pains delivered are an attribute of general Venzuelan dysfunction and not unique to Chavista, and outweighed by the consequences of the general US imperialism project in the Cone.